Each year, the United Nations releases an update on the state of AIDS, and its statistics are cited around the world in hundreds of reports and articles. In general, the U.N. data have painted a grim picture of the virus's inexorable advance.
But a report last week forces a reexamination of these views. In some parts of Africa, it seems, AIDS has advanced less than the United Nations had suggested.
New studies suggest that in Botswana 34.9 percent of adults (ages 15 to 49) are infected with the HIV virus, slightly less than the 37.3 percent reported by the United Nations.
The proportion infected in South Africa stands at 16.2 percent, considerably lower than the 21.5 percent claimed by the United Nations.
But Rwanda's rate is only 3 percent. Back in the mid-1980s, some researchers were saying that Rwanda might have an infection rate of 30 percent, and the United Nations claimed a rate of 11.2 percent in 2000.
The United Nations' credibility on AIDS will now suffer. [But] the credibility of the United Nations matters less than the reaction of health officials in poor countries and donor agencies. There has long been a concern that AIDS, while underfunded relative to the number of people in need of treatment and education, is arguably overfunded relative to other diseases.
Even Botswana's revised infection rate of 34.9 percent is devastating.
[From Washington Post editorial]
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